God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State

by Lawrence Wright

HOUSTON IS the only major city in America without zoning laws. You can build pretty much anything you want anywhere you want, except in designated historical districts. You’ll see some odd sights, such as a two-story family home adjacent to a roller coaster, or an erotic nightclub next to a shopping gallery, or a house made of beer cans. Solo skyscrapers suddenly pop up in residential neighborhoods. The absence of zoning is an artifact of the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s and 1960s, when zoning was viewed as a communist plot. But there was another group, of blacks and liberals, who saw an advantage in siding with the ultraright. “Zoning would have been used to keep people out,” Bill White, a former mayor, observed.

not to rebuild, you told us not to listen. Keep our city and traditions alive… The way of life you love the most will carry on. You taught us that. Your courage and care continues to inspire our whole city. We couldn’t be more proud to call you our neighbors, our friends, and our family. Texas forever. We’re with you. It was signed, “New Orleans.”

“I have worked alongside him, and I am proud to be his partner. We have had triumphs. We have made mistakes. We have had sex.”

“Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

“White people are scared of change, believing that what they have is being taken away from them by people they consider unworthy,”

Hotze’s main cause is attacking homosexuals, or “homofascists,” as he calls them. “The homosexual political movement will force churches, schools, businesses, and individuals to accept, to affirm, and even celebrate those who participate in anal sex,” he has said. Sodomy, he went on, “will be mandated to be taught to children in the schools at an early age, starting in kindergarten.” It goes without saying that homosexuals “want to make Texas a clone of California.”

Border Network for Human Rights,